Curcumin: Living Up to the Hype
The miracle spice you need to fight a myriad of illnesses and pain may be available to you right in your herbs and spices cupboard..
Once I understood the cycle of inflammation and disease, I really began to understand the life-giving properties of food and spices.
If humans, are made from the same stuff as the Earth (light—> energy—>atoms—>subatomic particles), how can the Earth not be responsible for our healing?
A plant is understood to require an adequate amount of sunshine, nutrients, and water; elements the Earth provides. Omit water, and you have a dried up, dead plant. Parallelly, omit water, and you have a slowly, dying human.
I realize that sounds extreme but it is one of the truths of the cycles of life, we rely on what the Earth provides. What has happened through history though, is that as humans became obsessed with their intellect, ego, and creations, we lost touch with our innate healing that comes from the planet.
We started relying on machines and other man-made mechanisms to tell us what our bodies need to heal, and forgot to look outside.
Everything in the Universe is intentional, it desires perfection. In that perfection it has given us the means to survive. After all, even all those pills that Big Pharma shoves down Americans’ throats are of plant origin, just stripped and manufactured.
I strive to understand chronic diseases not as a symptomatic pathology, but on a sub-atomic level. Understanding how our smallest parts interact with other small parts and how these collisions can breed healing and bring resolve to someone’s pain.
And what contains more complex small parts then food?
Antioxidants, phytates, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins, and enzymes; there are so many properties to a plant-based food; therefore, endless chemical reactions that can occur.
Researchers try to study every one of them despite the constant difficulties they have for funding considering their discoveries can not be patented and earn the investors billions because you can not patent a food or a spice.
Nonetheless, their papers still get published and create a stir in the medical and nutrition community when new discoveries yield powerful results. My personal research led me to the discovery of the miracle of turmeric and its potent chemical curcumin.
Understanding Inflammation:
I find people love attaching one buzzword to a particular food or spice. Blueberries—>antioxidants, kale—> vitamin K, and turmeric—>anti-inflammatory.
But what does it mean to be anti-inflammatory? Most of the time people can only understand that concept at surface level. Maybe you twisted your ankle and you visibly see on the surface of your skin inflammation developing around your ankle as your body flows white blood cells towards the area in an effort to heal.
Inflammation can occur at any given point in your body without you being fully aware, and it is the underlying cause of most chronic diseases.
Inflammation is the bodies natural, biological response to protect itself against harm. There are two types, acute and chronic. Acute would be the example described above with the ankle. However, chronic, is the lesser-known cousin of acute. Chronic inflammation occurs when unwanted substances flow into the body and the body attempts to fight these free radicals by creating a similar inflamed response, but is fighting against the body’s own cells by mistake.
When the immune system fights the body like this it can create diseases like psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, IBS, and cancer.
Inflammation is a critical component of tumour progression. The National Library of Medicine concluded in 2010 that tumours’ environments are created by inflammatory cells who play a role in the increase of gene mutations, and the spreading of cancer cells throughout the body. When the body receives an irritant/free radical, the immune response of inflammation combined with the injured tissue creates a site for the proliferation of disease.
“Tumours act as wounds that fail to heal”- NLM
Understanding Curcumin:
The mutated cells in a cancerous region breed from the inflammation the body creates in an attempt to control them. So chemo-preventative agents are studied to understand which agent can help with what stage of cancer development.
Carcinogen blockers and antioxidants can help prevent the initial stage of the mutation and anti-proliferatives work to keep tumours from growing and spreading.
Curcumin is special because it appears to belong to all three of these groups, meaning it potentially can help prevent/ and stop cancer cell growth.
Curcumin is an active ingredient in turmeric root. It belongs to the ginger family, and is predominantly grown and consumed in India. Considering India’s huge population, scientists have always been puzzled with their extremely low chronic disease rates compared to more industrialized countries. However, the reason simply lies in the food and spices they eat on a regular basis.
Turmeric is an active ingredient in curry powder and Indians are notorious for their big pots of curry with a lot of different spices and vegetarian alternatives like lentils, chickpeas, and healthy grains. Scientists suggest you only need a quarter of a teaspoon a day to feel the benefits of this root!
So how does curcumin actually work to disable cancer cells from spreading thereby, reducing tumour size?
What Can Curcumin Do?
Our cells are programmed to die. They have a mechanism within them called death receptors that tells them when their time is up called programmed cell death or apoptosis. This allows fresh cells to grow and takeover and get rid of the old, battered cells. Cancer cells have the ability to turn off this mechanism and live for as long as they want. Curcumin studied in vitro and in animal models, appears to reprogram the self-destruct mechanism back into cancer cells.
“Curcumin is special because it appears to belong to all three of these groups, meaning it potentially can help prevent/ and stop cancer cell growth.”
Curcumin can also kill cancer cells directly by activating “execution enzymes.” These are called caspases and they exist within cancer cells that destroy them from within by chopping up their proteins.
As incredible as chemotherapy drugs are for the treatment of cancer, cancer cells can develop resistance to them over time, whereas curcumin affects several mechanisms of cell death simultaneously, making it harder for cancer cells to survive and spread. It is still curious to researchers why curcumin can so effectively kill cancer cells as if they target them specifically, yet completely leave healthy cells alone. That is the miracle of the Universe.
Studies have shown great results for those suffering from many different cancers including esophageal, colon-rectal, and lung cancer. Although its results yield similar conclusions to that of chemotherapy drugs (about one third of the patients yielding positive results from the treatment), you have to weigh it against the serious side effects of those drugs. It also happens to be a very cheap spice you can buy at any grocery store and requires just a teaspoon a day to get a result!
Turmeric is rich in flavor and bold in color. It can be added to a milk for a latte, cauliflower for flavor, smoothies for nutrient density, curries for dinner, and many more. It is versatile and classified as a safe product which means you can consume A LOT of it and not reach toxicity levels. As someone obsessed with bio-hacking the body to adhere to a healed state of being, I believe food is genuinely medicine, and if we start treating our cutting boards like we treat our medicine cabinets we will unlock the ability of our body to want to be well; because just like the Universe, the human body wants to be perfect.
Below find recipes you can use to start incorporating curcumin in your life through turmeric !
Golden Milk Latte: https://www.wellplated.com/bedtime-golden-milk/
Turmeric Shots (No Juicer needed): https://oilswelove.com/turmeric-shot-recipes/
Turmeric Teas: https://oilswelove.com/easy-turmeric-tea-recipes-to-strengthen-your-immunity-naturally/
Turmeric Shots (Juicer Required): https://www.alphafoodie.com/ginger-turmeric-immune-boosting-energy-shots-juicer-recipe/
Turmeric Smoothie (Great for a midday snack): https://downshiftology.com/recipes/pineapple-turmeric-smoothie/
Turmeric Energy Balls: https://www.natalieshealth.com/lemon-turmeric-energy-balls/
Turmeric Soup: https://www.theroastedroot.net/immunity-boosting-turmeric-soup-with-vegetables/
Turmeric Quinoa: https://wendypolisi.com/turmeric-quinoa-with-pomegranates-and-walnuts/?utm_source=pinterest&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social-pug
Turmeric Salad Dressing: https://www.nourishmovelove.com/lemon-turmeric-superfood-salad-dressing/
Turmeric Coconut Rice: https://www.mysequinedlife.com/turmeric-coconut-basmati-rice/
Turmeric Muffins: https://christieathome.com/blog/lemon-turmeric-flax-muffins-recipe-vegetarian-dairy-free/
Turmeric Potatoes: https://cookinglsl.com/turmeric-roasted-potatoes-recipe/